High schools pep their football teams, Space Shuttle Endeavour moves to the launch pad, Democrats and Republicans head to Orlando to tackle though healthcare issues, and all over America folks go about their daily routines, while dire radio and television forecasts for Wall Street’s brokers and huge banks ring in their ears. They are understandably worried and confused. Until just hours ago, government regulators seemed equally confused.

The nineteenth century French writer Alphonse Karr is credited for our title. Perhaps a better way to express the sentiment comes from Ecclesiastes; “what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” As Democrats bask in the afterglow of an Olympian-like celebration of their hero and his landmark speech, and Republicans get ready for their similar week of bashing and promising things sound the same to this writer. If this country was truly interested in alternative energy we would have found a way to harness the wasted, endlessly renewable, gas from political conventions long ago.

The summer of ‘08 has been anything but a typical lazy, quiet break from an otherwise frenetic calendar. Global equity markets dropped like October meteors in July; oil and gasoline prices exploded past record highs as the summer driving vacation season approached; record levels of rainfall in the mid-west sent the mighty Mississippi River pouring over thousands of acres of rich farmland, destroying much of the nation’s bread basket; thousands of Americans have lost or are near losing their homes to foreclosure; China puts its best national face on for the rest of the world as they host the 2008 Summer Olympics – a time for peace and international friendship, and two Russian and Georgian women hug during their medal ceremony as their countrymen kill one another.

The summer of ‘08 has been anything but a typical lazy, quiet break from an otherwise frenetic calendar. Global equity markets dropped like October meteors in July; oil and gasoline prices exploded past record highs as the summer driving vacation season approached; record levels of rainfall in the mid-west sent the mighty Mississippi River pouring over thousands of acres of rich farmland, destroying much of the nation’s bread basket; thousands of Americans have lost or are near losing their homes to foreclosure; China puts its best national face on for the rest of the world as they host the 2008 Summer Olympics – a time for peace and international friendship, and two Russian and Georgian women hug during their medal ceremony as their countrymen kill one another.